


If I Tell You That I Love You Will You Still Leave?

by TintedPink



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Get Together, M/M, No Steve Hate Intended, Post A4, Post Infinity War, Stephen Strange is a romantic asshole, Steve’s death is off screen and depicted as a noble sacrifice, The World is Saved, Tony Stark is a mess what’s new?, and that’s just the way I like him, because I’m a lazy writer, but I never say how, pre slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 21:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16227464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TintedPink/pseuds/TintedPink
Summary: Tony Stark always knew he wasn’t good enough to have nice things.Stephen Strange saw 14,000,605 futures. And only one of them lead to this moment with Tony alone in his tower during Steve’s funeral.





	If I Tell You That I Love You Will You Still Leave?

Tony knew, but didn’t know, that the relationship was doomed from the start. His therapist told him he had to work on himself before he could love someone else, but loving others is easy. He gives them everything they could possibly want, all the vacations and experiences and jewelry a person could ask for, and he loves them with his whole heart. It’s not enough though. Tony knows it’s not enough. He has to love himself before he can love someone else, and he doesn’t think he can love himself after everything he’s done.

Steve was a breath of fresh air and a stench of failure in one. Steve made Tony want to be a better man and he made Tony hate himself. They got off on the wrong foot but with time, after New York, they grew closer, and maybe Steve was his friend. Maybe Steve was almost more than his friend, but then Steve goes on a mission for SHIELD and everything’s different and events spiral out of hand and Tony makes a mistake that costs too many people their lives and he doesn’t know if Steve’s his friend anymore, but he knows he isn’t more.

Tony regrets a lot of things. He regrets not going to therapy and talking through his mother’s death like he should have years ago. He regrets blowing up at Rogers and starting the fight with Barnes in Siberia. He regrets letting Steve walk away without so much as an apology on either side. He regrets keeping the phone in his pocket but never intending to use it. He regrets the things he has to do to save his planet, and the people on it, because he knows that Steve’s death has to come with it.

When Steve is dead Tony can’t make himself go to the funeral. Pepper, dear, wonderful, puts-up-with-too-much Pepper, goes in his place and sends his regrets while Tony drowns in a bottle. The world is saved, the snapped people are back, and Tony is all alone again. He forgot about Stephen Strange, weird doctor with a sentient cloak and a penchant for going back on his most solemn oaths, until he sees him on his doorstep, well, his metaphorical doorstep. He doesn’t actually see Stephen until he gets off the elevator on his floor of the tower, which he shouldn’t have access to, but apparently Friday, in her infinite wisdom, remembered how much Tony liked him and sent Stephen to “cheer him up.”

“You weren’t at the funeral.” Stephen said, sitting across from Tony and taking the bottle away from him. Tony though he was going to drink from it, but he just set it aside, out of Tony’s reach, and Tony hates him for it.

“What, were you his friend too?” He asked and it’s testy and slurred but it’s all he can manage. “He had plenty of those.”

“He was charismatic, the kind of man with values that he held firmly and made you want to follow him into battle like a knight of the round table.”

“That’s my line,” Tony says, remembering it from the speech he’d written while bawling and handed off to Pepper hours ago.

“Yeah, it is. But even knights of the round table make mistakes, Tony. Look at Lancelot.”

“I know you’re not,” he hiccuped, and it startled him a second but he continued like it hadn’t happened, “trying to compare Steve to Lancelot. Steve is a King Arthur if I ever saw one.”

“I would’ve named you Arthur, while we’re assigning characters. And Maybe Steve was your Guinevere, who loved you and was loyal, but strayed.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Tony stumbles to his feet, and Stephen moves to help him, wincing at the pain in his hands as he steadies him. “Steve- Steve makes me- he made me- Steve was a good man. He was a fighter. He was a soldier. You can’t compare them. Steve- he-“ Tony starts to cry and Stephen hugs him. The part of the future that the Time Stone had shown him had stopped minutes ago, and Stephen was no longer acting out of necessity. He held Tony as tightly as he was able and tried to soothe him as well as he could.

“He was your friend, and he betrayed you. Even good men make mistakes sometimes, Tony. It’s more honorable to his memory to admit that than to pretend he was perfect.”

“I loved him,” Tony said for the first time out loud, and it startled him to hear the words in his own voice. Stephen didn’t say anything, and Tony just cried and hiccuped. “I loved him, and he left. They always leave.”

“They don’t have to.” Stephen whispered and it’s in just the right tone, just the right words, that Tony believes him. Tony wants desparately to believe him. “Pepper and Rhodey, they haven’t left you. And if you want, I won’t either.”

“Promises. You already promised once you’d let me die before giving up the Time Stone.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The Time Stone is hanging around my neck right now. I didn’t give it up. I knew that you’d return it to The Sanctuary, I knew that you would save the universe.”

“It doesn’t count if you looked into the future.”

“Yes it does. Because I could have decided to take a chance on a dozen other possible futures, but this was the only one that ended like this. In this timeline you saved more people than in any other eventuality. I saw it, and I believed it. Fourteen million five hundred and six eventualities, and I choose to put my faith in you. You didn’t let me down. There were hundreds of ways that this future could have gone wrong, been torn apart, dozens of forks where you or anyone else could have jeapordized not only the population of the universe, but the universe itself. I trusted Tony Stark to make the right choices and he didn’t let me down.”

“Cute speech,” Tony said, because he couldn’t think of anything else. Everything else he could possibly say was too painful.

“And it wasn’t even mapped out for me by the eye. I’m just that good.”

“Yeah,” Tony whispers, and he thinks he imagines it, but when he looks, no, the sentient cloak is patting his head. Alright then. “With an ego like that you kind of have to be, or you just look like an asshole.”

“You would know.”

Tony laughed for the first time since Steve’s death and even thought it was short and clipped it was laughter, and it made him think that maybe he could move on. Maybe he could get past this. “Barnes, have you-“

“He’s going to be staying in New York for the time being. I’ve given him explicit instructions not to approach you unless you give the okay, and told him you’d do the same.”

“That’s really not-“

“I had to, or the timeline would have been disrupted.”

“That’s a good save. How long have you been working on that? Since before or after you got turned to dust?” He pulls away and Stephen is smiling at him. It’s genuine and only a little sad, and Tony adores it.

“Before. I always plan twelve steps ahead.”

“I can appreciate a futurist.”

“I know.”

 

If I tell you that I love you will you still leave?

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted to [Tumblr](https://iwritefanficsometimes.tumblr.com/post/178834106309/if-i-tell-you-i-love-you-will-you-still-leave)


End file.
